GATA challenges Fox''s Bill O''Reilly to report gold story

As GATA develops more and more evidence that the U.S.
government is surreptitiously suppressing the price of
gold, we need the help of our American friends in
mobilizing Congress for a full public accounting. So we
have prepared the following draft of a letter for
Americans to send to their U.S. senators and their U.S.
representative.

But sending these letters is not enough. You have to
follow up with phone calls to your senators' and
representatives' offices to ensure their responsiveness
and to prod them to prod the U.S. Treasury Department
and Federal Reserve Board for prompt answers.

If you don't know the names and addresses of your
members of Congress, you can find them here by
providing your ZIP code:

I am concerned about the U.S. government's policy
toward gold and particularly about evidence that the
government has been surreptitiously manipulating the
price of gold.

For three months now, an organization I support, the
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, has been trying to
get the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal
Reserve Board to answer some questions about these
issues. I would like answers to these questions too, so
could you, on my behalf, pose them to the Treasury
Department and the Federal Reserve and let me know if
you get any response?

Here are the questions:

1) What are the "gold swaps" cited in the minutes of
the January 31, 1995, meeting of the Federal Open
Market Committee?

2) What "gold swaps" have been made by the ESF, the
Treasury Department, or the Federal Reserve in the last
10 years? Whose gold was involved? What other parties
were involved? What is the status of these "gold
swaps"?

3) What was the purpose of these "gold swaps"? Do these
"gold swaps" facilitate the lending, leasing, or sale
of gold by other parties? How did these "gold swaps"
come about? What does the United States gain from them?
What becomes of gold that is "swapped"?

4) Were these "gold swaps" ever made public or reported
to Congress? If so, how? If not, why not?

5) Have these "gold swaps" encumbered or otherwise put
in jeopardy the gold reserves of the United States? If
so, in what amount and to what extent?

6) Why has the gold at the U.S. Mint at West Point,
N.Y., been reclassified this year from "gold bullion
reserve" to "custodial gold" and then to "deep storage"
gold? Is this gold still owned by the U.S. government?
Did its ownership change at all by virtue of its
reclassifications? If so, what is the authority for its
having left the possession of the U.S. government? Who
else has owned the gold by virtue of its
reclassification? What has the United States received
for any change in its ownership? Exactly where is this
gold now? Is any of it yet to be mined?

7) If, as Chairman Greenspan suggested in his letter of
January 19, 2000, to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, the
Federal Reserve System does not interfere in the free
trade of gold, why were "gold swaps" discussed at the
FOMC's meeting on January 31, 1995?

8) Exactly what is the policy of the Federal Reserve
System, the Treasury Department, and the Exchange
Stabilization Fund toward gold and the gold reserves of
the United States?